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So, How'd You Like Your Beer?
Go on. Admit it. You never thought this would end, did you? You never thought they'd actually leave, huh? With only days remaining, you still have nagging doubts, don't you?
Finally. Mercifully. Astonishingly. Incredibly. The insane adventure in national suicide known as the Bush administration is at last coming to an end.
This was a ride that beggars belief. Even after McCarthy and Nixon and Reagan and Gingrich, nothing prepared us for the last eight years, and I for one have difficulty finding the words that could begin to do justice to describing this historical folly of epic proportions.
The list of self-inflicted wounds is endless, running from the fiscal irresponsibility, to the lies about war, to the incompetent execution of every policy, to the extreme recklessness of environmental catastrophe, to economic meltdown, and to turning one of the most admired countries in the world into one of the most reviled.
It is a breathtaking record. It really is. Indeed, one might argue in complete seriousness that it would be far easier to list the one or two exceptions to a blanket rule of disaster than to catalogue the endless list of travesties themselves. It would certainly take a lot less time to specify any successes than to climb the mountain of wholesale failures. In short, it literally involves almost no exaggeration to describe this adventure in catastrophic governance by means of a simple covering adage: If there was a way the Bush administration could have diminished America, it did.
Given this endless chronicle of national implosion, I won't try - for the umpteenth time - to catalogue the crimes and catastrophes here, despite the fact that this week offers a good opportunity for summing up our world of hurt. There are too many, and they are too well known. Except for those that are not, of course, of which I expect there is a huge quantity. Not for nothing did the administration - in one of its very first acts in government - rewrite the rules concerning the release of presidential documents, so that it could control them completely, despite the fact that they belong to you and me, not Alberto Gonzales. Not for nothing has Mr. Cheney's shredder needed sharpening every morning for the last six months.
As tempted as I am to once more list what has been lost by an America that has lost so very much, I will instead confine myself here to two simple, albeit not simply answered, questions: What happened? And, Why?
The first one is easier than the second, though I contend that most Americans still don't know the correct answer. My guess is that most people think the Bush administration has been highly ideological and partisan, and indeed it has. I think they believe the Bush people were largely incompetent at governing, and they were. Many Americans might have a sense of the corruption attendant to Bush's team, and they rightly should. Lots of them probably see the president as simultaneously arrogant and over his head, and they're quite right to do so.
But I'm convinced what most Americans fail to perceive, even to this day, is the true depth of the evil here. What they don't understand is that the incompetence and the partisanship and even the garden-variety corruption are the least of what just happened. What they don't get is that the major reason the Bush catastrophe was so catastrophic is that these people never came to Washington to do good, in the first place. They came instead to do well, and boy did they.
If this child in the body of a man were named Putin or Castro or Kim, Americans would get it. If they were observing the country from the perspective of Zimbabwe, instead of the other way around, then they would get it. They can understand the notion of some foreign thug who means to do harm to our country. They get the idea, in other places, of a domestic thug who seeks to plunder his own country. They just can't imagine it happening here. And, therefore, they don't see that it just has.
Most people have completely failed to perceive the magnitude of the Bush crime, because they see it as limited to ‘merely' dumb policies, poorly implemented, by incompetent stewards of government. Would that that were so. We'd be so much better off as a country and as a world had it been only that.
Instead, this was an American Stalin, seeking to use military power for purposes of overrunning and raping other countries. Instead, this was an American Mugabe, seeking to steal power by any means, in order to plunder the wealth of his own country per the interests of a narrow band of cronies.
This president - and indeed the entire movement of regressive politics these last three decades (which I refer to as Reaganism-Bushism) - can only be properly understood as class warfare. Its purpose was never to make America a better place. Indeed, if we define America as a country belonging to its 300 million inhabitants, then the purpose was actually precisely the opposite. The mission of this ideology was in fact to diminish if not impoverish the vast bulk of these citizens, so that the already massively wealthy among them could instead become obscenely wealthy.
Where you or I might have looked at the middle of the twentieth century and seen the moment when America finally did justice to its national promise by introducing a measure of serious economic equality for the first time, and thus vastly expanding the middle class, the plutocrats behind Reaganism-Bushism saw a filthy aberration to the natural order of master and slave that had long existed in human history. They therefore set about to overturn that aberration and return to ‘better times' through a process of class warfare. That meant that labor unions had to go, along with workplace protections, good wages, decent benefits, government protections, and a far-too-moderate average CEO to lowest-paid worker salary ratio on the order of fifty-to-one, replaced instead by something closer to five-hundred-to-one.
And, where Washington was concerned, that meant that government was to become a vehicle to serve not the 300 million, but rather the 300 families at the top, who already owned the most but craved ever, ever more. It was a cash cow that could provide enormous riches to buccaneers who make the Somali pirates look like Campfire Girls in comparison. Social Security is not, from this perspective, a program to serve seniors and keep a roof over their heads during their final decades of life, but rather a pool of money which the government had been kind enough to already collect and centralize, just waiting for barons to come along and robber it. Deregulation is another important purpose of the federal government. Protecting the long-term integrity of the economic system from the exploitation of short-term Ponzi schemers with their derivatives and their garbage loans was so mid-twentieth-century, you know? And then, chief among all purposes of government under Reaganism-Bushism, are the tax cuts for the wealthy, even if - especially if - they can be made more massive by borrowing from suckers' - I mean, citizens' - children in future generations.
In short, if you merely hate the Bush administration for driving the country into penury, making us hated around the world, bringing on a global economic crisis, ignoring when not exacerbating a looming environmental catastrophe of planetary proportions, killing a million Iraqis on the basis of a host of lies, letting New Orleans drown, trying to wreck Social Security, sleeping through (at best) the worst terrorist attack on our shores, allowing when not assisting the Middle East in going up in flames, or dividing our country internally - if that's ‘all' you've got against these guys, then you have no idea how bad it really is.
Because how bad it really is can be found in the same place where one sees the difference between first-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter. The latter is a crime of ineptitude, the former one of intent. If you are fooled into thinking - as I suspect that most Americans have been - that the Bush administration was just a bunch of bungling ideologues who governed like Keystone Kops, then you will have been duped by the crime of the century. For at bottom these were kleptocrats, pure and simple. They came to steal, not to serve, and - with the chief exception of their foiled Social Security raid - they accomplished their mission rather handily. This was class warfare, and we lost badly. The rich in America are now far richer than they've been since 1929, while we and our government are infinitely more impoverished than we've been since the New Deal.
Of course, a movement representing one-half of one percent of the American public is never going to win elections as such, even as imperfect as is America's democracy, and so the kleptocrats had to do three things. First, they had to lie about their agenda. Second, they had to enlist others as unwitting agents in their crime. And, third, they had to steal elections. The three are, of course, heavily related. By pretending to be hyper-patriots, and by dressing up tax code changes, privatization and deregulation in the vernacular of freedom and the unleashing of economic dynamism, they could give their agenda a plausibility sufficient to fool those not looking too closely. Recruiting a few jive economists from academia to flak for not-so-funny-after-all Laffer Curves and the like gave the thing an additional patina of legitimacy.
Then, by pretending to give two shits about religious piety or national security threats, the kleptocratic junta could enlist the shock troops of the religious right and enough lazy and selfish voters necessary to seize power through elections (albeit with an occasional assist from regressive Supreme Court justices or swing-state secretaries of state) and fulfill their mission. As if they ever cared a whit about either of these grand diversions of religion or national security. These predators would have happily sold Saddam Hussein the very nails to put Jesus himself up on the cross if there was money to be made in it.
This has been, indeed, the crime of the century, and my only hope at this point is that it will ultimately be recognized as such. Right now, we are far from that. Most Americans abhor the Bush administration, to the point where quite a large percentage would probably be willing to call it the worst in American history. But that fails completely to do it justice, because it still misses the crucial question of intention. The difference between the perception of the Bush administration and the true reality of its mission accomplished is the difference between a well-intentioned bungler and a vicious though friendly predator.
There is so much that is amazing (in the same sense that witnessing a tsunami or a hydrogen bomb test is amazing) about these last eight years and the two decades preceding them, but if you're looking for something to top the list, consider the fact that the regressive right in America has now been reduced to using wholesale incompetence, gross negligence and catastrophic outcomes as its alibi. Think of how ugly and deep the real crime you're hiding must be if those are your diversionary tactics.
What's more, it's crucial to note that the danger of historical misinterpretation is far from the only one lurking here. In that respect, we would be well advised to remind ourselves that - even after eight years of devastation, even with homes being repossessed in droves, with jobs being lost, with medical conditions untreated because of insufficient funds, and even with an anodyne and centrist Democratic presidential candidate running a near-perfect campaign against a buffoonish McCain-Palin ticket - even after all that, we should remember that Barack Obama won in 2008 by a mere six percent of the vote.
And the resulting possibility that we could experience yet more Reaganism-Bushism brings us to the question of how this could have happened in the first place. What drives people to embrace stupidity, aggression, recklessness, destruction and contemptuousness as national policy, especially when they have other choices? Even worse yet (though that is hard to imagine), what impels them away from perceiving the even deeper crimes lurking below the death and destruction on the surface?
This second of our two questions is less easy to understand, but I believe the short answer is fear. Which is fairly astonishing, when one considers that we have long been the richest and most powerful country on the planet, by leaps and bounds. And yet this is a country whose populace strikes me as riddled with all manner of fears, in myriad aspects, whose ugliest political operatives understand this as well as they do the very concept of breathing, and who have become so used to preying on those fears that they engage in both practices both with about equal forethought.
It's been long said of George W. Bush that he wins elections because he seems like the kind of guy voters would be most comfortable having a beer with. That says a lot - an unfortunate, awful lot - about us fearful Americans. How frightened and insecure do you have to be, after all, to deliberately choose mediocrity for your government - with all the perils affecting you and your children such a choice entails - just so you won't be reminded every night as you watch the news that you're not as accomplished as the guy in the White House? Would we want our heart surgeons and airplane pilots to be equal exemplars of mediocrity? Would we enjoy the beer we'd be sipping with them in the afterlife, once they'd managed to get us killed? Nor is this just clever and fun, but specious, analogy. Just ask the thousands of Americans dead in Iraq, or because of absent health insurance, or a government that was partying instead of protecting them when the bad guys hijacked airplanes, or when the hurricanes came onshore. A certain American vice president likes to say that "elections have consequences". Well, indeed they do, Dick, and some of them can be quite lethal as a matter of fact.
The simple fact of George W. Bush as two-term president of the United States and leader of the Free World - as opposed instead to, say, the could-never-grow-up, could-never-stay-sober, sixty-year-old-frat-boy-cheerleader, Midland-Texas-Elks-Club-Secretary-Treasurer-who-couldn't-actually-keep-the-minutes-or-balance-the-checkbook, local-car-crasher-extraordinaire - will not exactly acquit us all very well in the history books. At least the Romans had the excuse of monarchy to explain Nero and Caligula. We don't. Nor can we plead ignorance. Our friendly neighbors in Europe dropped their collective jaws and looked on in astonishment from Day One. "You guys chose what? Out of 300 million of you? You put a dude in charge of a planeticide-capable arsenal who can't even properly pronounce the word ‘nuclear'? Are you freakin' kidding?"
Maybe the one thing I got out of the horror of the last eight years was a lesson in political culture. I learned that he who goes looking for rational thought or dialogue among the ranks of the regressives will come home a confused, addled and empty-handed fellow. That's what I was half a decade ago when that revelation whacked me across the forehead. I couldn't believe what I was witnessing. I couldn't believe that most of my fellow citizens could believe what we were witnessing.
But my mistake was to conceive of an America characterized by rational thought and some rough approximation of deliberative democracy. It's so long ago now, and no doubt my memory is foggy, but it seems to me that's what we had in my younger days. Yep, even with Vietnam and Watergate, even with Nixon and McCarthy, we seemed so much closer then to the Enlightenment ideal of the country's Founders. But something went desperately wrong - beginning in the late 1970s or early 1980s and culminating with this reign of the American Caligula - and it strikes me that there has been a paradigm shift in this country's cognitive architecture. Which is just a fancy way of saying we got ourselves real stupid, real fast. And real willfully, too.
I don't know what explains that, but I like to take the long anthropological perspective on these questions, and one can't help noticing that this is the exact moment that the wind went out of the sails of the American standard of living. Ever since then - following an economic rocket ride in the post-war period - it's been static, if not a real-value decline, for the American middle class (and we don't even bother talking about those in poverty any more). I think what happened is that we hit a wall and began having to get very creative in stealing from ourselves and from others and from our children in order to maintain a semblance of the old mass-consumption lifestyle. And I think we went looking for a politics that could justify and personify that expression of wholesale greed, which the regressive movement and the Republican Party were more than happy to provide. Thus did the most gluttonous faction of the most gluttonous tribe of the most gluttonous species come to rule the planet. And thus have we wrecked everything in sight.
I think we lived in some kind of deep fear that someone would take our toys away from us. And, worse, since we had so foolishly come to also imbue those toys with a sense of meaning, we thus added the existential fear that their loss would also mean taking away our very purpose for living as well. I think a political movement arose which understood that it could get additional subsequent money and power (and entertainment) out of stoking such fears by means of prior thefts of money and power from a frightened people. Give them employment insecurity and financial woes by siphoning their wages into the coffers of the already super-rich, and they'll just turn around and choose politicians who will then do far more of the same. It was the ultimate racket, and it lasted an astonishingly long time.
Nor is it even at all clear that people are the wiser, still at this late date. It's curious enough to ask how it is that Harry Truman and Jimmy Carter got ridden out on a rail, while this Thing continues blissfully on in office. How is it that he is not hated and despised? How is it that he dares show his face in public? How does he continue doing inane farewell interviews and presidential speeches without being confronted with even a sliver of reality?
Perhaps it is that the same fear which led us in this direction originally now also prevents us from reckoning with our wreckage. Perhaps our cowardice has now morphed from solitary failing to enduring habit.
But, of course, what isn't paid for now is only paid for later, at a much higher cost. I will be amazed if the coming decade or two isn't a period characterized by multiple and profound self-made catastrophes raging home in an amphetamine-stoked frenzy, each of them furiously seeking Mama, looking for a hug. That's an embrace we surely won't desire, but just as surely neither will we be able to avoid it.
We've been on a bender of exquisite proportions for thirty years now. We've done everything there is to do, to everyone there is to do it to, and more or less gotten away with it all. But now our creditors - literal and figurative - are lined up around the block, knives in their teeth, and they don't look happy.
All I can say, America, is that I hope it was worth it.
I hope you enjoyed the free ride you took by offloading your woes on the rest of the world, including your own children.
I hope you feel good about yourself.
And I hope you liked your beer.
50 Comments so far
Show AllA thoughtful and articulate article...
Green alludes to the Bush/Cheney regime's "working of the dark side", yet pulls his punches by only mentioning the election & deregulation fiascos... Soon enough, an account of the rest of the skeletons will tumble out of the closet... even if there is no accountability...
It is amazing that the majority of Americans have yet to wake up and realize that both parties are committing criminal acts against our own country. The republicans are the only righteous ones about it because they have come out from the dark and are committing the crimes in broad daylight. The democrats are still slinking around in the dark while committing them.
Rickster
Maybe we are slow to wake because we would also wake up to our own larcenous complicity.
'Not for nothing did the administration - in one of its very first acts in government - rewrite the rules concerning the release of presidential documents, so that it could control them completely, despite the fact that they belong to you and me, not Alberto Gonzales. Not for nothing has Mr. Cheney's shredder needed sharpening every morning for the last six months.' C'mon Rickster, 'broad daylight' only covers just so much. You sound as if you almost approve of the Republicans and their open contempt for, good grief, way too many things to list. This site is for progressives. Libertarians are free to use their own website. I think one of the best is libertytarandfeather.com.
"'C'mon Rickster, 'broad daylight' only covers just so much."
Not really, I don't think the republicans have been trying to hide anything. This has been going on since the Reagan years.
"You sound as if you almost approve of the Republicans and their open contempt for, good grief, way too many things to list."
I don't approve of anything either party has been doing. I would rather see the person attack me from the front than from the back. Both are bad.
"This site is for progressives."
I'm a liberal and proud of it. There's not very many people who claim to be a democrat who are liberal. Most democrats are nothing but light weight republicans if you ask me. The democratic party can't righteously claim the progressive/liberal title. You people buy into and vote for the lessor of two evils. None of you vote with your heart. Most of you follow public opinion which pushed by the MSM.
Rickster
Well said! I guess we got the beer we wanted all along. We must have a thorough, official and public accounting of the crimes. Let the facts be publicly revealed and then, if Obama has the guts, he can pardon the criminals.
After 8 fucking years of this shit, I will NEVER have another beer.
As a home brewer, I would happily share every one of my beers with the shrub. Just as soon as they have been processed by my kidneys.
The giant bottle of Anheuser-Bush FreeMarket Ale with the bright neon orange skull and crossbones prominently displayed on the label that America drank from deeply during our 8 year long tailgate party certainly did the trick. Everyone in the parking lot is dead; the ground is littered with bodies, many of them children, and the place looks like Jonestown after their Kool-Aid Festival. Does anyone truly think that, in the long run, this stupid and lazy country learned anything from this?
Astute analysis from Mr. Green, as always.
I'm guessing its length and breadth prohibited the inclusion of media's metamorphosis into Ministry of Propaganda as playing a supporting, but critical, role.
It was after the mass protests against the upcoming Iraq War - early 2003 - proved ineffective that I realized that the Bush government had no concern for the best interests of the public, that these people were not incompetent but deliberately malignant. It was an upsetting realization that deepened into shock as the 9/11 Truth Movement proved with unshakeable forensic evidence that the attacks were at the very least facilitated by Bush & Co.
After a lifetime of assuming that the people in power are there because they want to serve the public interest (even if they want to serve their own as well), I now see the Bush gang as a mafia. But I can understand why people believe "it can't happen here." To go from the saviors of Western civilization in 1945 to its destroyers 60 years later - within the lifetimes of many voters - requires an open mind and the time to examine the evidence.
I would part company with Mr. Green in blaming the public for being gluttonous and greedy. A good part of the blame has to go to our 'leaders' for their Keynesian economic policies (stimulate consumption) and their blind belief that economic growth is infinite and for their equally idiotic belief that capital can endlessly substitute for natural resources. Additional blame to the universities that give respect to the 'profession' of public relations, and to the elite media for their easily manipulated 'objective' stance and for ignoring those not insignificant groups of people who have been warning and protesting and trying to live in a less materialistic way. People don't live in a vacuum; they emulate those with better ideas, but if these better ideas are censored or ignored--as they have been--people cannot be blamed for not knowing about them.
Sioux Rose
SR (My initials, too), I'm right there with you! Excellent post! And I loved your point about "public relations." One of the most confused persons I know is a ph.D in that field and it seems to me the further one departs from truth, accountability and authenticity, the more PR might appeal to them. Look at Karen Hughes, paid how many millions to make a bloodbath like Iraq "look good" to the very persons being turned into martyrs, widows and orphans? Insane! Truth in advertising, oxymoron bar none!
Thank you so much for this article.
Bush and his cabal have been far different than mediocrity.Bush is drug-addled,sadistic and a coward.Evidence for his remaining supporters? His mocking of the pleas for mercy of Ms.Tucker while he was Governor of Texas-freezing for an incredible 7 minutes when told of the 9-11 attacks-drug addled?-dozens of mangled off the cuff remarks.
All of these aspects were known and the MSM followed through on none of them.
Are we to think that many well-intentioned didn't shrink from acting against these scumbags precisely because they knew they were likely to be tortured?
My appreciation goes out to those who risked dissent under these represive conditions:among these Progressive Magazine,The Nation,Keith Olberman,Jon Stewart and Will Durst.And you,Prof. Green.
Good synopsis of the disasters that have brought us to this point. But the conclusion is over-generalized and borders on a grim sort of hysteria.
It is not all of America, nor all Americans, who have profited, nor binged, nor approved, nor acquiesced, in the dreadful course of the last eight years. Many people besides Mr. Green have been appalled, and many have struggled against the tide. There are helpers in every profession, and heroes among the most ordinary-seeming of us. We must gather our wits, our hope, and our courage for the days to come. For we will need still to stand and try to provide sense and leadership during the days ahead. In the wreckage, we may be able to be heard and may find people more willing to listen--so we can rebuild what was once best in this nation.
D a v i d _ M i c h a e l _ G r e e n,
Thank you ecstatically for voicing the unseen disaster that we've brought upon ourselves, although I know you pulled many punches to deliver the overall abysmal message of our deceit riddled backdrop of REAL AMERICANA.
What is missing is CLEAR delineation of the agency and tools that drew us collectively into such self-destructive enterprises and misalignment with the dark forces of our folly, although you do correctly touch upon :
[_____ F E A R _____]
The near perfect usurpation of our independent _ M E D I A _ is again only a portion of the insidiously wicked _t o o l_ whose knife edges closer each day to our collective and individual jugular life flow.
I believe quite strongly, that the fruition of egregiously beyond conception devious propaganda and carefully crafted ( tailored ) individual and collective
[_____ P S Y O P S _____]
… is the reason we've all been so carefully and systematically swept along by the masses of "beer-drinking" wanta be-s".
Did anyone wonder where all of those Terabytes of mine-able web & info age marketing information about ALL of our spending patterns, individual's deepest heart-strings, life's goals, and most cherished beliefs really has been going ?
Of course the noose around our necks is of our own making, indirectly by laying forth ( and down into the bowels of corparape america ) our most vulnerable of pivot points of existence and inner meaning.
The multiplicity of wickedness is the
[_____ Jacka$$ $ewer Main $tream Media ( M$M ) _____]
leading us us blindly ( AS IF ) to our own slaughter -- while still feeling "good" about our actions, lives and selves ( in a very twisted distorted unreal manner ), and while we see and perceive the entire media as too left-wing biased although mostly somehow independent.
Only the facsimile of independence is permitted, as Florida's courts long ago ruled that reporters have no expectation to only speak of true matters -- but must do as their corporape owners require REGARDLESS of what is known -- and that the consequence of upholding what is true is now "JUST" grounds for being fired ( with no cause to appeal ).
The decadent abuse of the public air waves, which pre-suppose that the media MUST provide a SERVICE to the people -- is clearly in near total violation -- in that the SERVICE is predominantly in entirely the service of corporate powers AGAINST the public's needs and RIGHTS.
Namaste
P . S . -- "(at best) sleeping during _9_!_!_", is a rat hole few are courageous enough to descend into or even mention, for realistic fears of being branded a terrorist, idiotic, or worse.
For the true scope of despotic leadership, we must look how Stalin ran his 'ship of state', which is well documented now in the study of
[_____ P O N E R O L O G Y _____]
… the new science of how truly psychopathic individuals gravitate to positions of power and control, attracting more of the same and conditioning others to mimic their shameless disregard for any trace of humanity in their pursuits of wealth while also dishing out massively profitable WAR, death, hunger, and unrelenting world-wide suffering.
Geo the shrubish is not the real problem ( with his beerful cheer ), but only the front man of those perpetrating this $^%#@*^ class warfare
Sioux Rose
Excellent points about the magnitude of the dis-information campaign using the media for its varied and sundry aspects of mind control, when not manufacturing consent, or avidly maginalizing the politics of inconvenient alternatives.
Bush was helped by the democrats all the way through.
And those corrupt idiots are still there.
"To be humane is to be cruel, vicious and unrestrained, like humans.
To be inhumane is to be compassionate, restrained, moderate, like non humans."
Webber--I couldn't agree with you more. Mr Green tells the truth, but not the whole truth. The Dems enabled all the way but even in the 90's Clinton gave us NAFTA (cost $20 billion in taxpayer funded pork finagled by Bill Daley) and GATT something that Republicans said they never would have had the guts to tackle. The massive wealth transfer of the 80's was the S&L debacle, manufactured by an alliance of a Dem Congress and the Reagan administration. People who support the Dems are doing the same thing as the "regressives" Mr. Green refers to. And speaking of insulting "regressives" I can't believe a political science professor does not understand the propaganda campaign that's been waged on us since perhaps the 20's but certainly the 70's. Dividing us into warring tribes has been part of the plan. And so it has been throughout history.
Sioux Rose
CASSANDRA: Exactly! I miss Rich M relating how the whole thing is a team A/team B mechanism whereby the Republicans get to do all the damage, and then the democrats come back in to throw a few crumbs; but the ultimate dynamic keeps moving right-wards as has been the case for the past 3 decades, and boy are not only Americans paying the price!
Prof. Green: Excellent delineation of the "What." I think that there is much more to the "Why" though.
I'm a child of the 50's and 60's, so I am old enough to have grown up and lived through these recent events. One thing that puzzled me in the rush to elect and re-elect Nixon was to see poor friends and family members supporting the man. In my view this usually boiled down not to FEAR but to HATE. My poor brother-in-law, just back from Vietnam went on and on about welfare recipients...and he was in the same boat! I mean he HATED them! Remember the flag decals and the "America: Love It or Leave It!" bumper stickers? I do. (Also the "He's Dead. Get Over It!" ones about Paul Wellstone.)
I had moderately long hair in the late 60's as a college student and I was amazed at the outright HATRED I experienced from older folks and even from many of my peers (the frat boys especially.) I wasn't a Radical or even much of a Hippie, more of a christian. I wanted peace,love, friendship and co-operation among people. I still do.
I recall the HATRED for all things associated with the so-called Hippies. Remember the first Earth Day? I do. It was reviled. The corporations have now co-opted it as well as much of the ideals and slogans of the youth movement, but with a sinister twist. The symbols remain but the substance is gutted. Case in point: one of the first things Pres. Reagan did was to cut funding for alternative energy research.
Today my brothers-in-law, who are not much better off than me still idolize Bush et. al. They HATE anything, me included I guess, that looks or sounds like Love, Peace, and Brotherhood. Yet they call themselves good Americans and christians. I can't talk to them much anymore. Bush the Uniter saw to that.
I read the letters to the editor of my regional paper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune as well as the responses online. Those responses are still running only slightly better than 50-50 against Bush policies. Why? In the face of all the facts, I believe it is HATRED as much as FEAR, or maybe more so.
Sioux Rose
SKEEZYKS: I think your "long hair" experience was summed up eloquently in the film "Easy Rider." The Southern lawyer played by Jack Nicholson says to the 2 motor cycle long hairs JUST PASSING THROUGH the South, "They talk to you a lot about freedom, but a really free person scares them. And when they're scared, they're dangerous."
One element of the subliminal hatred is that long hair is seen as feminine. The curse words, most of them, describe sexual acts, and when used, are intended to produce shame or reduce the man into something feminine. There is profound hatred of the sensitive component of our natures, that which is generally attributable to "the gentler sex," or as Michael Pollard related "Real men don't cry tears, they cry bullets."
I thought, too, in this very Bible Belt area where I live, that my lifestyle, a single independent woman who comes and goes as she pleases not answering to any man is considered VERY scary to them. The entire arrangement of Christianity, and note this pattern is making a come-back through the authoritarian/fundamentalist sects, is for the male to be HEAD of the family. There are even Christian books encouraging the wife to "submit" to her husband, as if this is God's will. The God portrayed is really a male figure with all the flaws of everyday men, but he's been exalted, to the point that most patriarchal religions demand fealty even by putting one's life on the line as is seen in centuries of "holy war."
The animosity towards sensitivity, compassion, empathy, feelings and vulnerabilty smack against the entire Mars rules ethos of macho force, brute strength, and the oily muscle... and these images are kept alive by Hollywood, and they LIVE in the collective unconscious. Scratch the surface, and the prejudices bleed.
So true Souix Rose...
A truly empowered and self-actualized individual is percieved as threatening to those who, out of insecurity and selfishness, feel
Intimidated by folks who have integrity, compassion, and joy in their heart...
As a man seeking balance and mutual respect in all relations, I have experienced derision and ridicule by "feminists" for using scientific jargon in their presence, because they had the mistaken belief that men think scientifically, and using that language set in their presence was alienating to them and therefore sexist...
I tried to argue that women and men are equally capable of communicating logically and rationally, and using scientific terminology is a tool to find common ground... (In fact, today more women are attending universities than men, especially in fields of alternative medicine)...
They believed that to do so was patriarchical & invalidating of the feminine senses of intuition and emotion...
They claimed that men are less capable than women for intuitive thought & emotional intelligence, regardless of the individual...
When I asked for examples or evidence to support their view, I was told that they just knew it to be true, and who am I to challenge their feminine wisdom... end of discussion...
My female friends in grad school and med school get a good laugh out of this story...
I feel that there is just as much unspoken conditioning towards women to be socialized as "less logical" as there is for men to be "less intuitive" in this society... Whereas these modes of thinking & feeling have archetypal gender associations with them, they are two halves of the higher mind... And both are necessary to reach the level of synthesis to access universal wisdom...
Sioux Rose
GOLDEN: I have mixed feelings on this post. I knew a woman very hip to the esoteric who was getting a ph.D in psychology as she felt that was the only way she could truly be taken seriously as a guide there to help others. She told me she HAD to undergo intrusive "therapies" in her program, and that these were largely directed at finding out what was wrong with her to affect appropriate psychological treatment or therapy.
I think the entire academic model is built upon materialistic notions, and much of its subject matter is dense and antithetical to higher states of understanding. This gives a distinctive edge to logical types, types who test well and like parrots can recapitulate for tests, the "appropriate" answers. So much just does not conform to these metrics.
Men and women are made up of shall we say "the same cosmic DNA." Some men are amazingly intuitive and some women are as cold and logical as a doorknob. I resonate with the work of Jean Shinoda Bolen, Jungian therapist and author of "Gods in Everyman," and "Goddesses in Everywoman." Her books catalyzed in me the desire to write a book that interfaces the archetypes drawn from mythology with the astrological sun signs, and thereby create a technology that explains the movements of time (like thematic structures) that ebb and flow cyclically on the INSIDE. Women ARE biologically clocked to the moon and thus more receptive to this luminary's rapid cycle changes, and this in part explains why men do find women very unstable and changable. There is a very sexy side to this cosmic equation; and that is, given how many societies have allowed or encouraged men to have multiple partners (concubines, numerous wives, Haetera, comfort women, prostitutes, etc) to experience their inborn need for variety, I argue that ONE female partner given the freedom to enact her fully intended "wingspan" can in essence BECOME 12 partners to the male! Up until relatively recently women had 2 options: whore or madonna. And I believe the crippling of feminine dimensions of expression reciprocally acts to limit, or cripple males and their range of expressions. I have worked over a decade on a book that ties all this together. It's been quite a labor of love.
Sounds like a fascinating topic for a book... Is it published...?
If so, what is the title?
Sioux Rose
GOLDEN MEAN: It's such a dedicated effort on my part that I can't allow the typical agents/publishers to tell ME what to say for "commercial" purchases, so I am doing this one on my own. It should be in print by May, and I am fairly certain the title will be: Moon Dance: The Feminine Dimension of Time. However, it is about how the archetypes embedded into time influence the moods that all of us are heir to. Women, clocked to the moon (by virtue of its link with our menstrual tide cycles) are more susceptible to the moods of time than most men, Cancer men (ruled by the moon) the obvious exception.
"At least the Romans had the excuse of monarchy to explain Nero and Caligula."
"Thus did the most gluttonous faction of the most gluttonous tribe of the most gluttonous species come to rule the planet. And thus have we wrecked everything in sight."
"We've been on a bender of exquisite proportions for thirty years now. We've done everything there is to do, to everyone there is to do it to, and more or less gotten away with it all. But now our creditors - literal and figurative - are lined up around the block, knives in their teeth, and they don't look happy."
In my opinion, the purple hyperbole of David Michael Green at times forms a class of contemporary political prose all its own.
I find the analogy between Little George and Josep Stalin more than a bit overdrawn (the Halliburton detention camps have been set up but not yet staffed or filled with inmates), but much of Green's sense of historical sweep covering the last half of the 20th Century is very well drawn. It reminds me of the fine novel "Bonfire of the Vanities", in terms of capturing the consumer culture of a particular moment or period in American life.
How ironic then, that the drafters of the United States Constitution strove to set up a political system that would provide a democratic substitute for divine right monarchy, specifically to insure that there would never be another megalomaniac mad man like Nero, Caligula, or George III wielding power in our brave new republic.
How sad and tragic, that American gluttony replaced the gluttony of European imperialists that followed the religious crusades that extended back through Atilla the Hun to Ghenghis Khan from New to Old Testament wars to the very cradle of civilization. Haven't the most gluttonous always won out?
And as for the party finally being over, and the guys with the knives in their teeth lined up around the block outside.....
Paybacks are sure to be a bitch.
But don't worry. It won't happen on George W. Bush's watch.
Only four more days to go, and they've still kept us safe from a second 911 terrorist attack on American soil.
So it certainly can't be Bush's fault when the blowback hits.
Bill from Saginaw
"Only four more days to go, and they've still kept us safe from a second 911 terrorist attack on American soil."
Oh I don't know, personally what bush and company has done to us in the last eight years should be considered a terrorist attack.
Rickster
Mr Green is so definitely wrong about one thing: George Bush is in no way in league with Stalin. While Stalin was a ruthless paranoid genius, Bush is simply a spoiled rich brat, a jock wannabe, who allied himself with his more evil and educated neo con comrades.
That seems to just about sum it up.
Now for their next act the Republicans (Congress, SCOTUS, think tanks and media) will do everything they can to gum up anything useful the government might do so they can fool the rubes again and be back in bidness in a few years. Not much left to steal but hey these suckers work cheap. Shine shoes, wait tables, clean houses. This is the "service oriented economy" that Saint Ronnie promised us. We're living His dream.
hoghungry1
I am sitting here in West By Gawd Virginia sucking on a fine hand crafted beer (made by my brother) and I would never invite George to my house.
I am a IBEW electician and have spent most of his 8 years scrabbling for a job under conditions that have broken my spirit. Mutiple drug tests, certifications, additional licenses, (all at MY expense) Management got leaner and meaner as times got tougher.
It used to be an adventure to travel, work, and meet new friends. Under his regime, they want you close to the house and begging. I am absolutely delighted the drunken asshole is out of office.
George, I hope you stop in a bar near me and meet the boys. They will kick the living shit out of you and steal your boots. You never were really a good ole shitkicker from Texas anyway. Who do you think you were fooling?
double post oops
"...we got ourselves real stupid, real fast."
Right. Don't blame George Bush. There is a George Bush under every rock in Texas, alongside a few spiders and scorpions and centipedes. God, for reasons known only to Her, made these creatures exactly as they are. But She did not command us to pick them up with our tweezers and make them our Commander in Chief. Bush didn't do that, we did. And guess what, Professor Green. We're still stupid. The consequence of the Bush regime was, among other abominations, the wreckage of the economy, which impacted every household in America, so since we have contrived to have only two political choices we picked the other guys. Barack Obama, Fred Flintstone, whoever. A wild card. Anybody else. Blame Bush all you like, celebrate his passing if it makes you happy. Our problems are not nearly over, because we have not yet begun to emerge from Stupidville.
voxclamantis,
Lighten up!
We have just elected the very first African-American president in the history of the USA. This is a historic moment.
Never before in the history of the world, has a country with a white majority ever elected a African-American to be the country's head of state.
If your bitterness and cynicism prevent you from understanding what a profound change to the status quo the election of Obama represents, then crawl back into your redneck survivalist bomb shelter, and at least let the rest of us celebrate!
"Dr. King dreamed the dream, we get to vote that dream into reality." - Oprah
In 3 days...
We... Will... Party!
Get real, voxclamantis.
In some ways, it was a general countrywide lack of cynicism that brought to us the eight year wrecking crew. And perhaps on a similar scale, bitterness which has brought Obama.
As a lover of good craft beers (and home brews!), I am reminded of that old joke . . .
What does Budweiser have in common with sex in a canoe?
They're both fu**ing close to water.
Seventhson, try to stay serious here. Of course if I had a couple more pale ales I might have laughed instead of merely smiling.
Professor Green described the Bush years well and in an entertaining fashion. I just am not sure that the professor understands that the nightmare is not over, but is just beginning. The social fabric is ripping, and that will create an even more inviting predators' playground. And the possibilities of distracting the little people with even more electronic wizardry and computer game alternate realities are growing by the day. In the coming years the great majority will probably remember fondly the relatively prosperous Bush years, regardless of whether they recognize Bush's culpability in the cultural and economic decline.
"great majority will probably remember fondly the relatively prosperous Bush years"
Prosperous Bush years? for who? Everything I've seen has been downhill all the way. For the majority that is.
Rickster
My "prosperous Bush years" comment was partly tongue in cheek, but I was serious that I am afraid that the Bush years will be considered prosperous in comparison with what is to come. Almost no one is admitting just how poor our prospects are in the USA. Considering our deficits and our corrupt political system with the corporatists controlling both political parties, along with the perils of globalization and the likelihood that the population of the future will be even more distracted by electronic gadgetry, computer games, and other high tech wonders, and recognizing that the working class will continue to be divided over the social issues (a division the corporatists are always enthusiastic about exploiting), the future looks bleak from where I sit. A great deal of pain and suffering, and transformation, lies between our current situation and a healthy US society.
I think you have a very good point here, Kivals.
As a scientist I see very little serious discussion about what we need to do. And that was BEFORE no one could afford to do anything.
Some have asked on here where all the protestors were. They were working their assess off 80 hours a week to maintain houses they couldn't afford. As more and more lose their jobs and have a lot more idle time I think we will see the numbers in the protest marches grow dramatically.
There are two types of economic decline. One type is loathed by the people who anticipate another bonanza in the future. Another type is welcomed by the people who wish to stop feeding the monster, destroying the planet, and working like slaves. We can view an economic decline as an opportunity to get off the "grave train" or the "merry go round", and enjoy what's important. What's important?
What's important?
Life, liberty, food, friends and family, cloths to wear, a place to sleep, a good book, and every now and then a bottle of beer. Have I really missed anything.
Rickster
once again, mr. green, sheer brilliance.
oh, what joy to share that beer with bush. and then, crack. an empty bottle over that deranged skull. better yet, as in the wild, wild west, crack that bottle against a barroom post, leaving me with a bottleneck of jagged edges... bring it on, george. so that you might be more sure, i'll be your "the they."
"when i was coming up, it was a dangerous world, and you knew exactly who they were. it was us versus them, and it was clear who them was. today we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they're there." gwb 01.21.00
"What drives people to embrace stupidity, aggression, recklessness, destruction and contemptuousness as national policy, especially when they have other choices?"
The answer lies within the question: too many people are stupid, aggressive, reckless, destructive, and contemptuous.
(And there aren't that many choices in a two-party system.)
I was recently asked, in all seriousness, if I was glad Obama won.
No.
I'm glad McCain lost.
Many Americans thought they voted for change.
What they're getting is a handover; disguised as "transition".
Mr. Green, this is what happens when a society lacks a coherent model of reality. The "public relations" industry has been sculpting pseudo-models that trick and enslave the people to the elites. The people don't understand how everything is connected. They are taught to be specialists, not generalists, and accept the claims of "authorities" and "experts" without scrutiny. This is crucial for the smooth operation of the imperial steamroller. God Bless the United States of America!
"Enlighten the people, generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of day." - T. Jefferson
Yes, R T D U R Y
[_____"God Bless the United States of America!"_____]
has become
[_____"God Bless the United States of CorpoRAPE America!"_____]
Nice recounting of the ineptitude of the administration. The issue of whether someone can pronounce something correctly is a juvenile and ignorant criticism that I wish liberals would get over. Bush pronounces 'nuclear' the he does because he speaks a regional variety of U.S. English (like many other people). They are not all idiots.
Sooner or later we're going to have to put on our hip boots and get busy wading through the muck: sorting disturbing truth from outlandish fiction when it comes to "conspiracy theories."
Here's a no brainer: if you were in government and neck deep in one or more actual (legally defined) conspiracies, what better way to remain in the shadows than to disparage, dismiss, and ridicule anyone looking into your dastardly deeds - by apriori - labeling them all as whack-job "conspiriacy theorists."
Duh.
I say this in light of Professor Green's X-Ray-like clarity of vision re- the outgoing administration.
But what if even his penetrating gaze STILL is seeing only the tip of a more massive iceberg?
Sooner or later, for example, we're going to have to take on the task of determining whether a relatively few "monied families" run the world or not. From this perspective the Bush administration would be more akin to operatives, than masters of the universe.
From the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech: "The Drum Major Instinct:"
"Every now and then I guess we all think realistically about that day when we will be victimized with what is life's final common denominator — that something we call death. We all think about it. And every now and then I think about my own death, and I think about my own funeral. And I don't think of it in a morbid sense. Every now and then I ask myself, "What is it that I would want said?" And I leave the word to you this morning.
"If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don't want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long. Every now and then I wonder what I want them to say. Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize, that isn't important. Tell them not to mention that I have three or four hundred other awards, that's not important. Tell him not to mention where I went to school.
"I'd like somebody to mention that day, that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others. I'd like for somebody to say that day, that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody. I want you to say that day, that I tried to be right on the war question. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked. I want you to say, on that day, that I did try, in my life, to visit those who were in prison. I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity.
"Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice; say that I was a drum major for peace; I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. I won't have any money to leave behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind. And that's all I want to say.
:We all have the drum major instinct. We all want to be important, to surpass others, to achieve distinction, to lead the parade. ... And the great issue of life is to harness the drum major instinct. It is a good instinct if you don't distort it and pervert it. Don't give it up. Keep feeling the need for being important. Keep feeling the need for being first. But I want you to be the first in love. I want you to be the first in moral excellence. I want you to be the first in generosity."